Song of the Phoenix

In a village in northern China, the suona master Jiao Sanye is one of the last carriers of a tradition. The reed horn is played at weddings and at funerals, and its hardest piece, the one where a hundred birds salute the phoenix, is reserved for the send-off of someone judged genuinely virtuous, a judgement the master alone makes. He picks one of two boys and takes him into an apprenticeship that lasts years. As the villages change, western brass bands begin to take the suona troupe's place at the table. This is Wu Tianming's last film. The producer who cleared the way for the Fifth Generation directors died in 2014, and although the film was finished in 2013 it did not reach cinemas until 2016. The director of Life, Old Well and The King of Masks is asking his old question again: what happens to the person carrying a craft when the era of that craft closes.